Tracy McGrady belongs in the Hall of Fame

Tracy McGrady belongs in the Hall of Fame

Tracy McGrady’s NBA career has come to an end. Monday morning, McGrady announced the end of a 16-season NBA career that has taken him from Toronto to Orlando, Houston, New York, Detroit, Atlanta and San Antonio. He has one final stop to add to that list: Springfield.

By any measure, T-Mac is a Hall of Famer. This is true even though injuries cut his prime short. It’s true even though playoff success eluded him, and his only taste of the second round, let alone the Finals, was in his benchwarmer role on this year’s Spurs. His peak years in ability and health were so transcendently great that it would be impossible to justify keeping him out.

For starters, McGrady led the NBA in scoring two years in a row, in 2002-03 and 2003-04. Every single other scoring champion in BAA, ABA and NBA history is either already in the Hall of Fame or undoubtedly headed there when they’re eligible.

McGrady’s 2002-03 season with the Magic was his apex, and it was a season anybody who watched him will never forget. He was capable of going off at any time and scoring from anywhere on the floor, while also making plenty of plays for teammates. Measured by Player Efficiency Rating, it was the 16th-best season ever for a player who averaged at least 30 minutes a game. He scored 40 or more points 10 times that season, including a 52-point performance against the Bulls.

T-Mac’s six-season peak was the start of what looked like an all-time great career in the making. His first major injury troubles came in the 2005-06 season, his age-26 year. He hadn’t even started to reach his true, when his body had other ideas. Even after that, when he was healthy (he played 77 games in 2006-07 and 66 in 2007-08), he continued to put up excellent numbers.

The biggest knock on McGrady’s Hall of Fame case is his lack of success in the postseason, which is completely unfair. A quick glance at the teams he played with shows how little help he had for most of his career. When he signed with the Magic in 2000, he was joined by Grant Hill, who spent their entire time together dealing with injuries of his own while T-Mac carried a team consisting of the likes of Pat Garrity and Andrew DeClerq to the playoffs.

When he was traded to the Rockets in 2004, the plan was to team up with Yao Ming. Unfortunately, their stretches of healthy play never lined up at the same time. McGrady’s losing streak in the postseason wasn’t due to any of his own qualities as a player — it could be chalked up entirely to bad injury luck, both for him and his teammates.

The Hall of Fame should be a place to remember the greats of every generation of basketball players, not to punish them for circumstances beyond their control. McGrady had an incredible six-season stretch that should be one of the first things mentioned in any history of that period of the NBA. In five years, he’s going to be enshrined in Springfield forever. And that’s as it should be.

Playoff success eluded T-Mac, but he was a generation-defining player.

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